Preteens drawn to Victoria's Secret

Girls buy G-rated lingerie--for now

PHILADELPHIA — En route to dressing room, Lily Feingold and Brittany Garrison, both 11, barely glanced at the nearly nude mannequin in her red tasseled bra and high-cut panties at Victoria's Secret--one of their favorite stores.

"We don't use that," Brittany said, nodding toward the bra.

Neither Lily nor Brittany would have much use for any of Victoria Secret's bras, actually. "They're still outwardly mobile," joked Lily's mother, Suzanne Bonsall Feingold.

Marketing experts call Lily and Brittany's yearnings "aspirational," and that aspiration may explain why the girls and many of their friends are regular Victoria's Secret customers, despite their tender age.

The company says it is absolutely not marketing to this young a customer. But experts say that in a society where sexuality is omnipresent, young girls inevitably will look to a time when they can become sophisticated young women.

Or maybe they just like those cute lounge pants with the hearts and the glitter.

"We don't market to that age group," said Anthony Hebron, a Victoria's Secret spokesman. "Our typical customer ranges from 20 to in her 40s."

Oops. Somebody forgot to tell Lily and Brittany.

Shopping recently at the mall, the girls headed to a Victoria's Secret department called "Pink." The concept was introduced last year, Hebron said.

Pink's target market is the college coed aged 19 and up. "It's what you see around the dorm," he said.

If there are purple-pantied mannequins in see-through negligees on one side of the store, the Pink side is somewhere between G and PG-13, with stuffed animals, rhinestoned lounge pants in pink, and shirts decorated with Pink's trademark mascot, a pink dog.

Even the heart-covered thongs are more cute than racy.

It doesn't surprise retail experts that tweens such as Lily and Brittany enjoy Victoria's Secret.

"It's something mature, something sophisticated," said David Morrison, who heads TwentySomething, a marketing company focused on younger consumers.

Even though the girls shop in the "Pink" part of the store, they see the other merchandise and can aspire to being older and living the lives they see on TV and online, he said.

"They can't put their full finger on what it means, but they know it's desirable," he said.

"There's something we call age compression," he said. Young people are leaving their childhoods early, forsaking toys for other pleasures, such as shopping.

On the fashion side, his college students are wearing pajamas to class, and so are their younger siblings, when they can get away with it. That creates an instant market for Victoria's Secret's less provocative lines.

Victoria's Secret is also tapping into a tween trend known as co-shopping--or shopping with Mom, said Natalie Weathers, an assistant professor of fashion-industry management who is one of Rogoff's colleagues. "They are advising their daughters about their purchases, and their daughters are advising them," she said.

"They are not little girls and they aren't teenagers, but they have a lot of access to sophisticated information about what the media says is beautiful, what is pretty, what is hot and stylish and cool," she said. "They are very visually literate."

Morrison said he's not surprised that Victoria's Secret denies marketing to tweens. "There is a definite potential for backlash," he said.

"If Victoria's Secret is blatantly catering to 7th and 8th graders, that might be considered exploitative," he said. Also, Victoria's Secret's core customers might prefer their store sexy, not sweet.

"You don't want it to be so accessible that you lose the sense of sexiness," he said. "I think it's a brand that is walking a very fine line."

On a recent Tuesday, Lily and Brittany were shopping sweet, not sexy. And they definitely don't want to imagine their parents in any Victoria's Secret merchandise. "If I see my mom looking at anything, I say, `Eewww, Mom, what are you doing?'" Lily said.

The girls eyed a leather-covered stuffed pink dog, but put it back when they saw the $70 price tag. They looked at cotton lounge pants, but each owns several pairs.

"When I was little, I used to put on makeup to be like my sisters," Brittany said. "But you're wasting your time trying to be grown-up and not enjoying your life. Some girls do try to be older than themselves, and that's why they go to Victoria's Secret."